Veteran reporter and Elvis Presley confidant James Kingsley, whose nose for news, smart mouth and big heart made him a newsroom legend, died Friday morning at St. Francis Hospital. He was 66. Mr. Kingsley's death after a long battle with congestive lung disease and emphysema came almost five months to the day after his retirement from The Commercial Appeal, where he worked for more than 40 years. He could crack a story like an egg and scoop the competition like ice cream. To his younger co-workers he seemed to have stepped from The Front Page or some other yarn about old-fashioned, wisecracking reporters who know everything about everybody. Mr. Kingsley - who shared the nickname 'The Killer' with Jerry Lee Lewis - had close ties to the Memphis music community, from Sun to Stax and beyond. His friendship with and access to Presley, Lewis and other celebrities was a boon to readers of The Commercial Appeal and a bane to other news organizations. His Elvis exclusives were many, including the first stories about Presley's 1968 comeback special, and the 1969 return-to-Memphis recording sessions that produced Suspicious Minds, In the Ghetto and other hits. "I don't have a better friend than Jim, in or out of the newspaper business," said Sun producer Sam Phillips, who first recorded Presley, Carl Perkins and others. "Without fear of disfavor, he wrote of the black and white (performers) who made Memphis unique for its unmatched international impact through its music," Phillips said. Said entertainer Lewis, "He had been one of our dearest friends for over 30 years. He will be dearly missed." Mr. Kingsley worked on some of the biggest stories of his era, including the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962, the Otis Redding plane crash in 1967 and the death of Presley in 1977. His friendship with the singer enabled him to garner exclusive interviews with family members inside Graceland. He also was a driving force behind the annual George Klein Christmas Charity Show. A true newshound, Mr. Kingsley was famous for his ability to sleuth out the whereabouts of even the most elusive news sources. He once located Federal Express chairman Frederick W. Smith in a Boston hotel. Another time, he found Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson in Saudia Arabia. Once, when it was rumored that the Beatles were going to record in Memphis, he tracked down the group's manager, Brian Epstein, in London. Said entertainer Rufus Thomas of the veteran reporter: "He's the only one I know that never did write a lie about me." "What I did is, I never tried to doublecross somebody," Mr. Kingsley once said. "I wouldn't take much off the record. I'd tell them, 'If you can't tell me, I'll have to go somewhere else.'" James Douglas Kingsley was born March 3, 1929, in East Tupelo, Miss., where his family and the Presley family were acquaintances. He worked for The Commercial Appeal as a stringer in 1952, a year before he graduated from Ole Miss with a double major in science and journalism. He was the newspaper's Tupelo correspondent from 1953 to 1960, when he moved to the Memphis office. During his career at the newspaper, Mr. Kingsley worked the copy desk, the police beat, and covered city and county government. He also handled editorial promotions, including Newspaper in the Classroom, Best of the Preps, and the old current events television show Quiz 'Em on the Air. He leaves his wife of 40 years, Sibyl Kingsley; a daughter, Leigh Goodwin of Memphis; a son, Stephen Kingsley of West Lafayette, Ind., and a grandson. Services will be at 1:30 p.m. Monday at Forest Hill Funeral Home Midtown, 1661 Elvis Presley, with burial in Forest Hill Cemetery Midtown. The family requests that any memorials be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. (Published in The Commercial Appeal 9/16/1995)